26Sep05 — 5

Wandering The Web

I spent the final three days of last week in a grant-writing binge: tapping at my keyboards in the early hours, making phone calls to Brighton, wading through artspeak, eating dodgy fast-food. Over the weekend I had a chance to perambulate properly in cyberspace.

By following the ‘Blog aggregator of a friend I found an interesting live journal. I won’t name the intermediate friend because his is a just-for-mates ‘Blog. The interesting live journal, however, seems to be a public thing. It belongs to Shreena who is doing a PhD on Augustine who is a man worth a thesis. One of the longest friendships of my life started with me talking crap about Augustine over dinner at Green College and being corrected by someone who actually had a clue. Shreena includes herself in the loose bracket of “Indian”; like me, she passes the Cricket Test, but with flying colours. Also, like me, she doesn’t believe that racism is confined to whites. Here she is writing about British “ghettos”.

Chase Me Ladies was funny last week, live-‘Blogging a crash landing. It also vied with Shooting Parrots for the last ‘Blogging word on those shocking revelations about what Kate Moss puts up her nose. Harry at CML goes with “Colombian Death Squads Dump Kate Moss“; Shooting Parrots offers this majestic piece of word play. (As you would expect, Laban Tall is taking a harder line.) This is good too.

As if to atone for previous crimes, Spirit of 76 gave Freud a deserved seeing-to at Drink-Soaked Trots For War. The crushing of the old fraud makes a satisfying squishy sound, especially when followed by the crunchy-grindy noise of his spectacles and pipe being pulverised.

Meanwhile, at Blognor Regis (whose Mark Holland I must thank for the Shooting Parrots link), those of you craving the kind of comedy denied you by my decision not to finish this post can enjoy his replay of that classic of British cinema Confessions of a Driving Instructor. I have no doubt that Holland’s commentary is funnier than the original script.

Now, a request to ‘Bloggers everywhere: could you please, please (especially you, Worstall) put your fancy tracking/counting/ego-boosting widgets on the RIGHT HAND SIDE of your content. That way when the rest of us come to visit your homepage we don’t have to wait for the Technorati/TLB/SiteMeter servers to decide whether or not they’re working before your actual posts start to appear in our Web browser window. It’s maddening.

26Sep05 — 2

WLTM Complete Failure For Friendship, Long Walks

Just had that Hind on the phone. I did my listening thing while she relived a Very Important Exam In Doctoring with me because she’s worried she might have blown it. Hind, you haven’t. I know this because, as a medical school drop-out, I am an expert.

Then she asked me about my life and, as usual, I had little to report. “Yes, Hind, I am still a spectacular washout.”

So I told her again that two of my ‘Blog posts were going to be in this book.

“I know, Damian. You told me.”

“Oh yeah.”

“Ben was in the exam too. He’d been reading your ‘Blog because it referred to him at one point.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“He’s making a ten-part series of Bad Science for the BBC.”

“Blimey.”

What I need is to master the art of being proud of being an underachiever. “Yes, I once had Great Promise, but then I realised that it’s not all about striving for success. Now I am very spiritual. I’ve learned that I can take pleasure in my friends’ new families and celebrate their triumphs. The burden of ambition has just fallen away from me, leaving me feeling liberated. And spiritual.”

By ‘spiritual’, do you mean ‘bitter, lonely, envious, and unemployable’?

“Ooh, look, that makes an acronym—in, er, French.”

That Ben Goldacre’s bloody not 31.

26Sep05 — 16

Strawberry Jammin’

My longstanding disdain for white people with dreadlocks is well known, and even extends to the otherwise charming and helpful young man in the local music shop who insists on addressing me as though we are lost siblings*. Even in Upside-Down World, if Hak is to believed, they have Pasty-farians:

“[O]ne of Sydney’s more annoying buskers in the Central Railway Station tunnel [is a] twenty-something Caucasian male, he has the full dreads and teacosy hat, and hops around, obviously convinced that he’s chanelling Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer. Except that, er, instead of hitting the offbeat, he hits the downbeat everytime. Watching the faces of passersby – as they realise what’s going on – is truly comical.”

I too have witnessed this strange phenomenon of musicians who don’t quite get reggae. Specifically, they seek the skank, but instead obtain the oompah. This phenotype is not linked to melanin expression. One of the best dub bass players I have ever heard looked a bit like Coronation Street‘s Reg Holdsworth.

In the 70s and 80s the so-called serious music press would mock Sting for his Jah-mehk-i-an accent, and for playing “cod reggae”, but gave the likes of Joe Strummer** a free pass for their attempts at assimilating the style. But The Police got it; The Clash never quite did. And who did the People of Colour subsequently fall over themselves to sample and collaborate with? The widely (whitely?) despised Geordie bassist. It’s also worth noting that within a year of Gordon Sumner (Sting) being born to a milkman in Newcastle-on-Tyne, John Graham Mellor’s (Strummer’s) diplomat father was probably putting the freshly-slapped infant down for the private Surrey boarding school he would go on to attend before beginning his career as a class warrior. Mind you, even today, Sting still can’t seem to keep himself from playing a bass like a guitarist and getting just a smidgen ahead of the sacred pulse. I wonder if Kipper is ever tempted to nudge him back a few milliseconds…

And, for all those no-longer-young Germans who always asked the question when I first met them on school exchange trips to the free half of their country in the 80s, no, I still can’t “break-tanz”.

While I’m on the subject, Christ at Gak Maximum is very angry.

[*I used to go out with a very, very funny and somewhat posh-sounding girl who delighted in mocking herself by saying in a loud RP voice as we walked out of London establishments where I had been addressed by the beige-or-darker, “Goodness! You do have a lot of brothers, don’t you?”]

[**I only recently saw Grosse Pointe Blank. Despite the—in parts inspired—script, the film was nearly ruined by its soundtrack, a cavalcade of cack featuring some godawful musical scribbling from Strummer. If you haven’t seen it yet watch out for Dan Akroyd’s delivery of “Workers of the world unite” as a punchline. Genius.]

25Sep05 — 21

Plots In The Klondike

The mini-revival of dotcom mania is in full swing. Even The Guardian printed a student entrepreneur story yesterday. A month ago the “bedroom boffin” (as has probably already been described by his local newspaper) had an idea that’s turned out to be a cleverer than it looks on paper. Alex Tew’s milliondollarhomepage sells off space by the pixel on a single collective hoarding/billboard. Each piece of screen real estate links to its purchaser’s own site. He won’t take porn ads, but doesn’t seem to have any moral problems with the ubiquitous Golden Palace Casino. Some advertisers put up their logos; others are more cryptic; some are plain stupid. I had no problem resisting the temptation of a banner carrying the illiterate brag “I’M RICH, YOUR NOT”, but had to click on a tiny blue blob marked with the word “song” to reach its target, a page that streams a not-unpleasant ditty by
a Gloucester band called Ghosting, delivered in an Athlete pretending-to-talk-to-my-mates-dahn-the-pub vocal.

24Sep05 — 19

You Can’t Get The Staff

On Thursday, as I drove from my appointment at the dole office JobCentrePlus, Cambridge looked beautiful enough to break your heart. Compared to Oxford, you don’t see people in gowns much here, but I passed a line of them walking very decoratively along The Backs that afternoon. The sun was shining low—through trees that hadn’t even got around to doing their golden foliage thing, but still looked gorgeous—and dappled the black figures as they processed beyond a long rank of parked cars. Luckily I snapped out of my reverie in time to avoid removing the vehicles’ wing mirrors. Commenter casualsavant will testify to my near complete failure to take advantage of the sights here, but when I’ve been rowing and running around the place I’ve seen some lovely picture-postcard scenes. (Given the chance, cs would also have a thing or two to say about my driving.)

Nothing much happens in Cambridge, but I’ll miss that too. Lately, however, the local papers have been excited to have a juicy murder plot to report. No one died, of course, but that means everyone can enjoy the tale without feeling guilty—except for the plotter, that is, who the cops got bang-to-rights. Karen Quinton became infatuated with a man who wasn’t her husband so she decided to hire a contract killer called “Dave” to remove the man who was. She promised Dave £10 000 from Mr Quinton’s life insurance on delivery of her widowhood. Unfortunately for Mrs Quinton, but fortunately for her husband, Dave was an undercover policeman. I mean, what are the chances of there being a bloke sitting in a Cambridgeshire pub, ready to do away with an inconvenient rellie for you? You could probably find a bloke called Dave ready to explain string theory to you, ready to guide you through the microeconomics of health insurance in Texas, ready to recount the social history of the Kite area of the city, ready to build you a custom PC, or even ready to teach you how to play the lute. But ready to commit murder? You’ll have to nip down to London for that, love.

Funny thing is, I was in the Co-op supermarket the other day and I caught sight of the front page of the Cambridge Evening News, the main non-free newspaper round here. Mr Quinton was on the front cover, publicly declaring his love for his homicidal wife in spite of everything. Just goes to show: not everyone in this town is very bright.

23Sep05 — 5

Uh-Oh

This page is starting to appear in my referers:

“Alice (9/22/05 6:26 pm)
Ralph story
I was browsing online and I came across this weird mocking story of Ralph. It isn’t the best story but I found it amusing. here’s the link:
www.pootergeek.com/?p=1725

ArcticLady (9/23/05 7:30 am)
Reply
humph… I don’t know the owner of the weblog, but he doesn’t seem to know much about Ralph and his mannerisms and habits.

There was a discussion not long ago about weblogs; how they are kind of a grey area, that nobody regulates, and you can bark whatever you want and get away with it. Suing someone over a disfavorable image in a weblog is quite fruitless. I was not thinking of the Ralph story now, but in general.”

How long, do you think, it will be before the footsoldiers of the Ralph Fiennes Barmy Army are here telling me where I can stick my satire?

22Sep05 — 4

Toe Curling

How bad is Be Cool? The best thing about it is the performance by The Rock.

And, according to the Internet Movie Database, what acting projects does he have lined up to follow this turkey?

Instant Karma 2005

“A visual effects-laden comedy about a safecracker who dies and is reincarnated as a series of animals.”

Spy Hunter 2006

“An ex-fighter pilot rids the world of spies, assassins, and other vermin with his souped-up Interceptor car.”

Ride Along 2006

“In order to win the favor of his dream girl’s family, a young man ([Ryan] Reynolds), who is a cognitive therapist specializing in non-violent communication, accompanies her tough-as-nails brother ([Dwayne ‘The Rock’] Johnson) on his police beat.”

Gridiron Gang 2006

“Teenagers at a juvenile detention center, under the leadership of their counselor, gain self-esteem by playing football together.”

Watch out, Sean Young.

21Sep05 — 3

Carry On Up The Khawr Abd Allah

[BASRA. Outside a terrorist hideout, two undercover SAS men wait for their final instructions from their Mahdi Army handler. They are sitting in a Morris Minor dressed in Lawrence of Arabia costumes and wearing blackface. One is wrapped in a girdle of fake sticks of dynamite, stamped with the legend “ACME”.]

FIRST SAS MAN: Durqa durqa jihad durqa baklava Mohammed…

[I’m sorry. I’m going to stop there. The guys were risking their lives. A spoof like this would be wrong, but, gah, the temptation is vexing me.]

21Sep05 — 3

Copywronging

I am always raving about The Economist on PooterGeek, partly by default. Although most people think of it as a magazine or a journal, it’s one of the very few newspapers in Britain that lives up to the name. Because, for example, more millionaires read The Economist than any other international publication there’s no need for its journalists to waste time writing about Kylie’s breasts. Heaven knows how much it costs to buy a page of advertising next to the clear prose of its fact-checked content and sober analysis.

Sadly, the people filling this expensive space aren’t bound by The Economist‘s style guide. As it modestly suggests that the builders of the pyramids would have been its customers, specialist bank Eurohypo combines two of the tiredest corporate clunkers to create its slogan on the back page of this week’s edition. Yes, Eurohypo really does have “a passion for solutions”. On the inside of the same cover World Press Group “engage meaningfully with key stakeholders” and “help you substantiate the most effective international press schedules”. They illustrate this with the example of their creating “greater impact and better understanding of Shell’s tangible response to the glonal [sic] energy challenge”.

Guys, here’s how to create greater impact internationally: WRITE PLAIN ENGLISH!

21Sep05 — 0

Cha Cha Cha

Here’s someone who is even more offensive about minorities than I am. And she’s funnier. And I bet lots of people want to sleep with her. If you’ve got a Quicktime player on your computer, you must watch the trailer for Sarah Silverman’s new film.

21Sep05 — 1

She’s Right

This quote from Zadie Smith, is cited by Celia Walden in The Daily Telegraph as further evidence of the young (and annoyingly successful) author’s being “cantankerous”:

“In a lot of chick lit, depicting women slightly older than me, the sexual maturity is that of a nine-year-old. The sex is just this giggly and ridiculous activity one is subjected to in order to make a man stay in your house and marry you. There’s no honest expression of female sexual desire.”

I’m no fan of the woman, but Ms Smith has hit the nail on the air-head this time.

20Sep05 — 10

“A terrific eye-bulging belter”

Talking of young Conservatives, many older members worry that the party is not only suffering in the polls, but that there are few up-and-coming Tories around to reinvigorate the organisation. Recess Monkey, however, has been scouting for emerging talent. [Recess Monkey down as of 10:00hrs BST.] Check out the gobsmacking Website of Annesley Abercorn, candidate for National Chairman of Conservative Future. He’s endorsed by Peter Stringfellow! He owns a big red bus! He gets jobs done! He has to be a made-up person! AA is supposed to be about half my age, but his page design looks like something from the early nineties. It’s got to be a parody. Surely?

20Sep05 — 5

Birds, Eh?

Penguins: evidence of Intelligent Design or gay Commie bastards? You decide.

[Having provided this link about animal behaviour and evolution I am now bracing myself for a breathtakingly confused Cuthbertson post accusing me of elevating “my radical politics” over “what science tells us about human goals and social realities” by failing to point out that “one of the most basic principles of modern Darwinism” is that, just like penguins, people who regularly wear black tie are right about everything. He will misspell my name and the comments will be provided by barking loons.]

19Sep05 — 11

The Negative Equity Show

Yet another reason why I am glad I don’t have a television set is that there is no chance I will have to watch financially illiterate debt-pushers peddle their poison in my living room. These people are destroying young lives. If I had bought a place to live when I moved to Cambridge to start my first “permanent” job I would now be struggling to sell into a falling market a depreciating asset on which I had paid thousands of pounds of interest. Instead I currently have several bulging bank accounts. Though I will resent the inconvenience and the rip-off charges involved with moving away from this town and into a flat in another one, they are nothing compared to the transaction costs that would have gone with my selling up. Here is my advice for first-time buyers: Don’t. It’s a journalistic cliché, but Merryn Somerset Webb put it well in the Times: “Buying is the new dead money“.

19Sep05 — 4

Danickian Superwoman

Jackie Danicki has been on a roll lately. Her last two posts about women and life—“Truman Capote and the rewards of the mundane and unexpected” and “The real meaning of ‘equality’, and why most feminists are anything but ‘pro-choice’“—have been gems. A lot of female newspaper columnists follow the “Polly Filler” template of complaining for five paragraphs about the terrible burdens of being a rich metropolitan mum with an even richer husband, imagining this somehow makes them representative of Women In Britain, and then demanding that the government do something about their “problems”. Jackie’s approach is more like: “Life is hard and involves unavoidable trade-offs; my life is mostly a good one; my happiness is neither the government’s responsibility nor its business; get over it.” I might even start buying a “serious” newspaper again if one of the broadsheets hired someone like her. Go, girl!

(Do you think I could get a column in The Guardian called something like “How the White Man gone done me wrong and that’s why He now owes me a livin'”? Hmm. Possibly not while Gary Younge is still working there.)

18Sep05 — 0

Pack Shot

The following requires that you are at least partly familiar with the plot of Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby—more familiar than Amazon is, at least. Every so often the system by which the company’s Website attaches cover images to product descriptions goes horribly, horribly wrong.

16Sep05 — 0

Back Again

Thin ‘Blogging this week too because I’ve been staying in Brighton with the Brincklows again. It was fun and productive and I’ve just got back. I wish I could tell you where I am hoping to live because it is so comprehensively, amusingly PooterGeek. Ah, the things I can’t ‘Blog…

15Sep05 — 3

Noooooooo!

Further to one of my shortest and most cited posts, if you don’t mind having Return of the Sith spoiled [hah!], the frankly strange Mike Doughty explains that, because Darth Vader is black, you must trust your feelings and know that he is your father. Mike was an amazingly prescient child:

“I have this interesting memory from my childhood: I heard that rumour that there were going to be nine Star Warses. I was elated. Then I did the math. I realized it would be well into the 2000s by the time the last one came out; I’d be in my thirties, and the movies wouldn’t mean that much to me. I remember so well this poignant feeling, desperately wishing I wouldn’t grow up.”

14Sep05 — 0

Choice Quotes

Glenn McGrath:

“I think I was saying 3-0 or 4-0 about 12 months ago, thinking there might be a bit of rain around. But with the weather as it is at the moment, I have to say 5-0.”

Jeff Thomson:

“England will lose the five-Test series 3-0 and the margin will be worse for them if it doesn’t rain. If you put the players from Australia and England up against each other it is embarrassing. There is no contest between them on an individual or team basis.”

Terry Alderman:

“If Australia get away to a good start then England have got no chance. They have got to be competitive in that first Test at Lord’s or else it’s goodnight.”

Matthew Hoggard:

“They’re getting on a little bit – we’ve got back-to-back Test matches so it’ll be interesting to see if they can put in the consistent performances for 25 days. It’ll be interesting to see if they have the firepower to bowl us out twice.”

The Daily Telegraph, Sydney:

“What’s worse than a whingeing Englishman? Gloating Pommies. One day we’ll lose the Ashes and it will be as horrific as waking up after a night on the drink in a room full of images of Camilla Parker Bowles.”

You have no idea.

[Thanks to The Motley Fool]

14Sep05 — 1

Perhaps A Subscription-Only Service?

You think the stuff I put up here is crap? Behind the login page of PooterGeek there are now about one hundred and thirty unpublished posts. Some of them are funny. Many of them are cruel or in bad taste. Some of them aren’t cruel enough. I mean, what kind of satire could I create about, say, the government of Zimbabwe, whose lying bastard of an ambassador is on Radio 4 now, lying like a bastard?

13Sep05 — 0

Fashion It Is Then

Remember when they used to do stories about falling sales at Marks and Spencer, when they still didn’t take credit cards? Today it’s a story about falling profits at French Connection, whose Website won’t allow you to look at anything at all unless you have Flash installed.

Once you have Flash installed then you can see that French Connection’s frontpage look for men involves wearing a translucent white baseball cap on your head back-to-front. And that “FCUK” still looks like “FUCK”! Hurr! Hurr! Look at my T-shirt! It looks like it says something really rude Look! Look, everyone!

[Mystic Meg voice:] I am looking into their future… …through the mists I am seeing a huge logo being crushed by a huger sell-by date.

12Sep05 — 13

And So It Ends

A coloured guy, a lesbian, and a Jew settle down to enjoy a game of cricket…

Before the great battle begins today I must remind you of what is at stake, not merely a century-old sporting trophy, but the pride of the English-speaking ‘Blogging world.

…And the coloured guy says to the lesbian:

This is a fantasy, I know—and will probably remain so—but, so help me, I am going to crow at you and Norm even until the end of time if the Aussies blow this series. They are rare birds, but the sight, in any habitat, of Lesser Spotted Australian Losers is possibly one of the most beautiful in Nature.
Posted by: PooterGeek at May 16, 2005 02:01 AM

Harken to the cry of the Striped West Midlands Warbler. How would you like your crow cooked? And would sir like the chips or the vegetables?
Posted by: hakmao at May 16, 2005 01:48 PM

This exchange was, in turn, linked to by Norm (time-stamp given according the right-side-up standard).

…Then the Jew says:

Pigeon peril

Be afraid. Be very afraid. Glenn McGrath has some plans. Hak has the link – along with a blustering threat from the Geek. (He’s sweet really, despite the attempt to talk and look tough.)

Posted by Norm at 11:24 AM May 16, 2005

It says a lot about the nature of the second-fiercest(?) rivalry in international cricket that the Geek, the Cat, and the Prof quoted above were born respectively in Nigeria, New Zealand, and Zimbabwe.

I’m off to bag me a brace of Corvus corone. In the meantime, Hak, Normski, and bar staff throughout the southeast of England, you might find this page useful later.

1 crow
stuffing of your choice
salt and pepper
shortening
flour
2 Pie crust mixes
2-3 hard-boiled eggs

Stuff the crow. Loosen joints with a knife but do not cut through.
Simmer the crow in a stew-pan, with enough water to cover, until nearly tender, then season with salt and pepper. Remove meat from bones and set aside.
Prepare pie crusts as directed. (Do not bake)
Make a medium thick gravy with flour, shortening, and juices in which the crow has cooked and let cool.
Line a pie plate with pie crust and line with slices of hard-boiled egg. Place crow meat on top. Layer gravy over the crow. Place second pie dough crust over top.
Bake at 450 degrees for 1/2 hour.

…Watch this space for the punchline.

12Sep05 — 1

GSOH

[Before you read the article I link to below, those of you not up with geeky three letter acronyms need to know that “IRC” stands for “Internet Relay Chat”, which is like Microsoft Messenger for the sort of people who build their own PCs.]

Related to the “people you wish you didn’t fancy” thread (which is growing nicely), at a site that collects Web images of unattractive people, a sharp thirtysomething female dissects the hypocrisy of other, not-so-sharp thirtysomething females:

“[T]he other day, I was having lunch with a group of pseudo-friends and the inevitable “perfect man” conversation goes around. For those of you who haven’t figured this out yet, it’s one of those oblique conversations where the topic matters less than making whoever’s listening think you’re not as shallow as you really are.

It goes like this …

The first thing to do is dismiss the so-called superficial. Jane says she doesn’t care for looks, but personality. Sally nods and suggests a man’s profession and level of income aren’t important either. If you don’t agree, you get attitude – so even though you know these things are at the top of everyone’s list, you play along…”

Read it all. It won’t take long.

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